Tuesday, May 29, 2018

We’ve gotten through Champions League and most of the relegation/promotion stuff so we may as well focus on the World Cup. And what a World Cup, Buffon playing his sixth, Pulisic making his WC debut, quality on-site reporting from Fox and two time Copa America champs Chile just part of what should make for an amazing tournament! Plus of course the the family-friendly, inclusive atmosphere sure to be fostered by the Russians.

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I understand and will not attempt to dissuade anyone from a boycott, but unless I'm very confused, the bills are all paid at this point, right? Or the ink is dry on the contracts, at least. I'm not sure ratings impact anything other than the next TV rights sale in 6 or 8 years or whenever Fox's deal is up.

Oh, of course. And it's even stupider, in that I don't have a TV, so a "boycott" means that I'm not going to sit in a bar and watch, and I'm not going to run an illegal stream. The only people who suffer are the bar up the street and the Bitcoin miners who miss an opportunity to inject some malicious code.

Russia will want to run up the score. There's a decent chance they could finish level on points with either Egypt or Uruguay (though most likely it would be Egypt for 2nd place and Uruguay for group winner).

This is especially important to do in a group with one very bad team (like this one), due to the WC tiebreaking method that uses all group games.

Russia will want to run up the score. There's a decent chance they could finish level on points with either Egypt or Uruguay (though most likely it would be Egypt for 2nd place and Uruguay for group winner).

Yeah, it's kind of terrifying what Uruguay might be able to do to these guys.

I think every advertiser, especially for expensive events, has a minimum rating number and if that number is not passed they get “make good” ads which means they will get the ad ran some other time for free or at a reduced rate.

I think every advertiser, especially for expensive events, has a minimum rating number and if that number is not passed they get “make good” ads which means they will get the ad ran some other time for free or at a reduced rate.

538's odds are finally out (dunno why they took so long). They are actually quite similar to betting odds and ELO, with a few exceptions. One of the exceptions is they had Saudi Arabia as a team with a typically bad chance to advance (about 1 in 6), whereas betting odds had them at half that at best. Saudi Arabia has looked pretty terrible today.

The 538 odds seem a bit unstable still (maybe they are still working on the methodology?)--many of the group odds have moved since yesterday even though nothing has changed.

Sincere question from someone who watches almost zero soccer outside WC. What is the animus against Fox broadcasting the WC? Is it purely the Fox News affiliation? Is it the on-air talent/production of soccer? Was Espn's coverage somehow better? I've found Fox Sports to be quite good at advancing certain production elements, such as golf, despite the weak on air golf talent, and definitely football during the 90s. I guess I'm also asking, who's good at producing/broadcasting soccer?

Sincere question from someone who watches almost zero soccer outside WC. What is the animus against Fox broadcasting the WC? Is it purely the Fox News affiliation? Is it the on-air talent/production of soccer? Was Espn's coverage somehow better? I've found Fox Sports to be quite good at advancing certain production elements, such as golf, despite the weak on air golf talent, and definitely football during the 90s. I guess I'm also asking, who's good at producing/broadcasting soccer?

Fox is bad at broadcasting soccer (as they are at many sports). It is particularly glaring when you compare their coverage with the work NBC does week in week out with the EPL. The big thing that strikes me is Fox' complete lack of respect for the viewer. Just two examples; a few years ago they hired Gus Johnson as their lead Champions League announcer solely on the basis of name recognition. His soccer background was minimal and he demonstrated that regularly before getting the boot. Contrast this with the absolutely terrific team NBCSN rolled out; Arlo White, Jon Champion, etc...

Secondly is for the World Cup the majority of coverage is being done in the studio in the US. They aren't bothering sending most of their announcers to Russia. This seems to be a cost-cutting measure in the wake of the US failure which I get but it still rankles.

Just generally Fox is bad at sports coverage. Based on the sports I watch NBC is first and Fox and ESPN are last. As jmurph says, NBC doesn't do gimmicky, they do straight up coverage.

Exhibit A, from today's match: the graphic showing the final score and who scored the goals listed the goal scorers in alphabetical order instead of the order (by time) in which the goals were scored.

See, it's bullshit like that that makes Fox strictly bush league when it comes to broadcasting. I'm sure someone thought they were being "disruptive" with that graphic, when in fact they were just being ####### stupid.

Quite a snoozer. I literally (literally!) could not stay awake until my wife made me coffee. Credit to Egypt's fans for being very into it, anyway. Lots of giveaways. Uruguay's offense looks poor and without ideas. Best chance came to Suarez who put into the side netting. Godin is so annoyed he is starting to play offense.

Egypt did about as much going forward as you would expect, without Salah. Not much, but more than nothing. Neither goalkeeper was tested.

Suarez blows his third good chance of the match. To be fair, the GK made a very good save on the second one, and played it decently there as well. Egypt finally had a shot that gave Muslera a little to think about.

Game opening up. Egypt had two chances on the break, but couldn't get a decent shot either time. They needed Salah. Won't come in now though, as Egypt has used all their subs. Must be a coaches' decision, because Dr. Sergio assured us he was healthy.

Never change Luis. Flopping and flailing as if shot while simultaneously attempting to hit an opponent in the groin. He is just about done though. The past season or two he has dropped off a cliff.

Too bad for Egypt. I thought they did pretty well all things considered. With Salah I think they would have felt really good about advancing. Without Salah though they are going to need to scrape one against Russia. I’ve never bought the propoganda that Salah was fit. Klopp said it was a bad injury from the outset. Given what was reported at the time I had thought it would be medically irresponsible for him to play in the group stage. Maybe he gives it a go against Russia but given it was still bad enough to keep him out the whole match today that isn’t promising.

I don't get why the talking heads all thought that Uruguay played so poorly. They dominated possession, created a bunch of really good chances. If Suarez dinks one or two of those in, the entire story would be different.

I don't know that him sitting the whole match today is definitive. This group has always been set for Russia/Egypt to be the big game. The fact that Egypt was playing Uruguay to a standstill for 89 minutes probably had them thinking to just hold steady and try to ride their way to a point. They came up short but still a 1-0 loss has Egypt in good shape. If you assume they beat the Saudis it's really all down to the Russia game. If I only had 30 or so minutes in the group stage from Salah I'd want to make sure I took it in that match.

I don't get why the talking heads all thought that Uruguay played so poorly. They dominated possession, created a bunch of really good chances. If Suarez dinks one or two of those in, the entire story would be different.

They created almost nothing in the first half, and the score was nil-nil until late. The story had already been written in the minds of the talking heads.

Agree that by the end of it they were deserved winners, but overall they need to play better than that to advance past the first knock-out game.

Also it was Egypt. For a team that fancies itself a semi-finalist if not more they need to play better than that. At the same time like in tennis the best teams often start a bit slow. In 2010 Spain lost to Switzerland in their first game and that worked out.

Sure, but if we are at 30 minutes of Salah fitness levels he isn’t going to be SALAH!!!!! anyway. Salah isn’t just some dude. It would be like if Wales made the worldcup and used Bale as a super sub for a total of 30 minutes in the group stage. He’s THE man. There are only three guaranteed matches this cycle and no guarantee of any next cycle. This is it. He didn’t play. Very difficult to say that is anything other than a very bad sign as to his health.

Sure, but if we are at 30 minutes of Salah fitness levels he isn’t going to be SALAH!!!!! anyway. Salah isn’t just some dude. It would be like if Wales made the worldcup and used Bale as a super sub for a total of 30 minutes in the group stage. He’s THE man. There are only three guaranteed matches this cycle and no guarantee of any next cycle. This is it. He didn’t play. Very difficult to say that is anything other than a very bad sign as to his health.

Agreed, but 75% of Salah is still probably the best Egypt has to offer. I wouldn't be surprised if he is much worse off than they are letting on though.

Defender has to be there. You have to be tight to the attacking player if he's in the box, he just fell for Ronaldo's dipsy doodle move and got beaten.

He has to be there, he doesn't have to stick his foot in. If you go for the ball in that area you cannot miss. It is not that dangerous of a situation. You can lead Ronaldo down the edge of the penalty box, and make it difficult for him to square the ball back. He has maybe a 5% chance to score from that spot. You can't stick your foot in and make it 75%.

Finally a nice free kick by Ronaldo. The BBC guys were saying you can't go over the wall from that spot, but I don't think that is really true--we've seen it before though admittedly it is hard from that close. That ball actually looks like it would have gone over the wall. It was certainly close.

Spain has been the clearly better team today, but a draw would mean that all of the other group games are likely to matter, if only for GD.

Last clean sheet for Australia was against Chile in 1974. They gave up 9 goals in 2014, 6 in 2010, 6 in 2006 (one in the QFs against Italy). The only other WC they made was all the way back in 194, where, while they did keep a clean sheet against Chile, they actually couldn't score a single goal, losing to both East and West Germany in shutouts. So, one clean sheet in 13 games.

France started strong but then ran out of ideas, seemingly. Not a good first half performance. Best chance was actually for Australia on a set piece that came off of the French defender and forced Loris into a good save.

France seems to have at least 2 big problems so far. They don't have a good plan for how to get through a packed defense... after the first 15 minutes (when France looked very dangerous) the best looks came from a couple of hopeful Pogba passes over the entire defense, that, despite their quality, would have taken near brilliance to convert. The second biggest problem is that they are leaving Australia so much time on the ball to kick it around in the back, which has the effect of shortening the game by reducing the overall possessions/chances for France and letting Australia conserve energy.

VAR! Oh man a soft penalty on a VAR review. I really do not like it. What a joke. I hate that call live though you could perhaps forgive a ref for calling it as its hard to see way down the field. I REALLY hate it on review. WTF.

I like to think this was not a typo, and Australia was participating in a World Cup about 1500 years before being discovered. Probably just randomly showed up in the Colosseum like a bunch of ubiquitous Aussie tourists, and nobody stopped them.

Pundits are saying that Griezmann would have controlled the ball ("had complete control of the ball" they say) without the contact. I very much doubt that. It looked gone to me... and at any rate it was not nearly within his complete control.

xG has the game as almost a draw (aside from the missed penalty). Argentina didn't do enough going forward to guarantee a victory, but more worrying might be how they allowed Iceland 0.9 xG at the other end. Almost all of that must have been in the first half, where Iceland arguably had the better of the chances.

France basically didn't press at all. They let Australia hold onto the ball for significant stretches. In the end, they were very lucky to win because they didn't push the issue and assert their vast superiority with or without the ball. I would call it a coaching failure bailed out mostly by luck.

I have been rooting for France to go far into the tournament, but that game sure was not promising.